


Babe With The Power

by MarbleGlove



Series: Her Kingdom as Great [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25678729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarbleGlove/pseuds/MarbleGlove
Summary: Toby Williams studies magic at Hogwarts, but there's more than one type of power and Toby learns to use those too.
Relationships: Jareth & Toby Williams, Jareth/Sarah Williams
Series: Her Kingdom as Great [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/196337
Comments: 133
Kudos: 776





	Babe With The Power

**Author's Note:**

> this story has been in the works for years, as I poked and prodded it, and I finally decided, screw it, it's as developed and thought out as it's going to get, I'll just post this thing to get it off my plate

Hufflepuff colors were theoretically yellow and black. Toby, however, wore them as gold and dark grey. It was not purely intentional on his part, although he never told anyone at Hogwarts that. But when he put on his robes, the yellow took on the golden shimmer of the endless plains and the black took on the worn grey of the ancient Labyrinth. Helga would have understood: His loyalty was with those lands, and Hufflepuff was the house of loyalty.

He had once worried that he would accidentally betray his sister and the land of the plains due to his interest in the Goblin lands and desire to join them.

Jareth had inspected him closely, looking at and through Toby in some way, one gloved hand raising to turn Toby's head this way and that way before saying, “I do not think it is possible for you to be stolen from Sarah. I can make you into a Goblin, if you wish, but it will never be all that you are. You will always be something more, and part of that is what Sarah has claimed as hers. Even if you were to actively betray her, you would always and forever be _her_ traitor.”

Sarah had agreed, though stated it differently. “I want you to be happy and choose your own path in life. No matter what you do, you will always be my brother.”

He had been reassured, and stopped worrying about it.

There had been plenty of other things to worry about at the time since he was mostly trying to study as much magic as he could before British wizarding society destroyed itself entirely, arguing about whether the megalomaniac cult leader was back from the dead or not.

From Toby’ perspective, if there was an organized group of wizarding terrorists going around killing people, whether or not one of them was a zombie or just a copycat wasn’t the important part.

Even when he’s first received his invitation letter, the teacher who’s come to speak with his parents hadn’t wanted him to actually attend.

“There’s a war taking place,” Professor McGonagall had explained. “An evil wizard, referred to as You-Know-Who, is trying to stop muggleborn wizards like your son from being a part of our society. He’s killing them. It’s important to get training, but it’s too dangerous for him to actually attend the school. I’d like to arrange private, secret, tutoring for him instead.”

Toby’s parents had looked horrified and grateful, but his older sister Sarah had looked judgmental. “This so-called You-Know-Who is trying to kill kids like Toby to keep them out of the society, so you’re trying to segregate them instead?”

The professor had been affronted. “I’m trying to keep these students alive! When the war is over, the school will be safer.”

“That’s how you treat natural disasters, not social justice movements or even gang wars. For social change, you can’t just skip over the dangerous parts.”

“Mom, Dad! This is a magic school! I can’t get culture if I don’t attend the school! You said that’s why I couldn’t be home schooled before when I was getting into fights at regular school! You have to let me go!”

“This doesn’t sound like culture you want to get,” his father had said.

Toby had rolled his eyes. “You don’t want me to act like my regular classmates either. ‘It’s not about liking them, it’s about getting along with them.’ _You_ said.”

“It’s dangerous, Toby,” his mom had said.

“Too dangerous,” Professor McGonagall had reiterated.

“Actually,” Sarah had said, “as long as he stays inside Hogwarts’ grounds, it’s no more dangerous than anywhere else in England. Hogwarts is an old goblin castle and half-sentient all on its own.”

“Awesome!” said Toby. “I have to go!”

“But it’s not a goblin castle,” the professor had stated blankly.

“Hogwarts Castle? Of course it is. It was conquered by wizards in 993 AD, but it has all the regular aspects of a traditional goblin castle, including moving walls and staircases, hidden rooms, and various other protections that will keep Toby safe inside.”

The professor looked like she wanted to argue but didn’t have the information needed to go against Sarah. It was a look that Toby was familiar with from a lot of people who came into contact with his older sister.

“It’s not safe.” The professor had reiterated. Again.

“Life isn’t safe.” Toby had rolled his eyes. “It’s _important_. Please, Mom?”

And thus, Toby Williams was one of the few first years to start at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry the year the headmaster and the minister of magic were actively calling each out for lying to the public. He was the only muggleborn in his class.

It was not nearly as exciting as it could have been, although he’d been at least somewhat prepared by his sister.

“Jareth said I’d be able to do voodoo!”

“He meant you have magic. Jareth has very little understanding of the differences between human cultures and finds us rather homogenous.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we all seem the same to him at first glance and he doesn’t care enough to tell us apart. It can be a bit unnerving until you realize that some of his goblins are look like moss with eyes or walls with hands or giant rock faces. Goblins look different enough that I first thought they were distinct types.”

“Does that mean I can’t do voodoo?”

Sarah hesitated. Toby knew that was a good sign. Sarah never said something was impossible unless it really and truly was, which mostly meant she would tell him he wasn’t allowed to do some things rather than that he couldn’t. If she was hesitating then voodoo dolls were still an option!

“Voodoo is a religion and a culture as well as a way to perform magic. It is more encompassing. You cannot get to the magic except through the culture first. It is possible that you could go that path, but you would go to it as an outsider and never be truly native. If it calls to you, then that is what you should do.”

“Yes!”

“But,” Sarah continued rather dryly, “if what you really want to do is just curse people, there are easier ways.”

Toby eyed his sister suspiciously. “Then why did Jareth say I had the power of Voodoo?”

“Probably because Voodoo and his own version of wild magic interact well together. He has likely had friends or lovers who practiced Voodoo, and he equates human magic with it more readily than with any of the more categorical magic practices.”

It turned out that there were much easier ways to curse people than to join a new culture and religion, although the competing propaganda running rife in the British wizarding society was certainly trying to make it harder.

The classes weren’t actually all that much different from regular school, except now he had to take regular school classes in the summer to make up for the subjects that magic school didn’t cover.

The one real benefit of Hogwarts castle was the history teacher. Professor Binns was a ghost! And he taught about the Goblin Wars! It was amazing! Toby loved it!

Most of the other students didn’t really understand how awesome their history class was, though, so Toby made it his mission to explain it to them.

His extra-curricular history club started with him just recounting the stories that Professor Binns had already covered, but with more energy and more details. Lunch was really the best time for that.

“And great chunks of the labyrinth’s outer walls were destroyed as the wizarding army threw pre-set charges of magic more concentrated than any living being could maintain and too suddenly explosive for the labyrinth to absorb. The army marched past the outer walls when suddenly Ohargauth the Flatulent stood alone between them and the inner walks of the labyrinth. He was an old, old goblin and fat beyond messure and ugly as a toad but brave beyond words and wily as the king himself. And there he stood alone facing off against two hundred wizards. Doomed to die, Ohargauth took a knife to his own belly and spilled the contents in a great flood at the feet of the advancing wizards, creating a bog of such foul stench that it blocked their way with an almost physical wall of fumes.”

He recounted in ringing tones, and before taking another bite of the turkey leg he was eating. Then he dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper, “And then, with his dying breath, Ohargauth the Great Flatulent cast the curse that made the stench eternal!”

No few students in the area wrinkled their noses and went “Eew.”

“Still today there is a break in the walls between the outer and inner labyrinth that is guarded by the Bog of Eternal Stench. And anyone who gets so much as a drop of it on them will smell of it forever until the day they die and probably even then.”

He took another bite of turkey.

That was the day that Headmaster Dumbledore had suggested that he reserve one of the empty classrooms to hold a history study group rather than telling such tales during meals.

Even as the war heated up, deaths and attacks were increasingly common, even students at Hogwarts were beaten and disappeared, Toby never felt personally threatened. Hogwarts castle was kind of like the castle in the center of the Labyrinth: it moved around him and it loved him and it protected him.

It wasn’t fair, but nothing in life was really fair. Life was just life.

He was in his fourth year when the Death Eaters took charge of the school and by the end of the year Toby was the only muggle-born student still studying there. Students looked at him with awe and concern, teachers tried to tell him to go home for his own safety.

He had tried to explain it to some of his friends. “Look, you can be fair, and you should be! Right? But life isn’t fair. I mean, that’s just obvious. Life just is. Life doesn’t play by your rules, you play by Life’s rules.”

And with Jareth hanging around, Toby had always known that when the other guy is making the rules, then fairness isn’t really an issue. To be perfectly honest, if he were making the rules, fairness wouldn’t be an issue either. But if it wasn’t the guy with the ancient magical kingdom and goblin army making the rules then it was the sister with the other magical kingdom and an iron will who was, and Toby couldn’t exactly compete. And if it wasn’t fair that they were the ones always making the rules, well then, that was sort of the point.

“Lack of fairness isn’t the issue. The real question is if the unfairness is for or against me. Because sometimes unfairness works in my favor and the trick to life is to figure out when unfairness is on my side and use it as much as possible while it lasts.”

When he had explained this to his housemates, they had all backed away and said that the Sorting Hat had clearly made a mistake in putting him in Hufflepuff rather than in Slytherin.

Certainly his theory of life did gain him respect from the Slytherines, which he took advantage of in order to make friends, but he also pointed out to his own housemates that their reactions were stupid. It was insulting to think that Hufflepuff would only get people who couldn’t be placed elsewhere. Sure he had plenty of Slytherin traits just as he also had plenty of Ravenclaw brains and Gryffindor courage. But more important than any of that was the fact that he prized loyalty above everything else. Loyalty was important. Loyalty to the people under you, loyalty to the people above you, loyalty to your friends, and even loyalty to your stupid housemates who think you’re too Slytherin.

They’d come around eventually, and all the students worked together just to survive that year.

But even when he wasn’t in the castle, when he was around town, he tended to have bodyguards watching him. Jareth laughed when he asked about them.

“What did you do to the goblins in at the wizarding bank? They’re terrified of something happening to me.”

Jareth laughed with too many teeth to be human.

“I? I did nothing.”

“Hmm.” Toby said, pointedly dubious.

Jareth’s grin widened even further. “Your sister, on the other hand…”

Toby should have known. He knew better. He did. Sarah could do anything, including threaten a whole bank of goblins, but still, “What could she have done?”

“Do you want to see?” Jareth offered a crystal ball.

Toby took it without any hesitation, although he knew that always bothered Sarah. But then, he knew that even if Jareth ever did try to do anything to him, Sarah would rescue him, so really, there wasn’t any risk. And he did want to see what his big sister had done to the goblins.

He had a crystal that Jareth had given him years ago, but it was tricky to use because you had to know what to ask for with it. This crystal already held the image. He looked into it and could see Sarah walking into Gringotts Bank.

Sarah walked in to the bank carrying a large purse, which wasn’t unusual because Sarah was often carrying weird things around in a variety of large purses, but was of note, because, well, she was often carrying weird things in them.

She asked the goblin at the desk to meet with someone to open an account for herself and to consult on exchange rates with gold.

The goblin’s eyes glinted a bit at that and Sarah was quickly ushered towards an office.

Toby had seen Sarah bargain before. She was always going out to get new things and she knew how to bargain. How to ask about the details and get the stories and show interest in the people before ever getting to a named price. It was how it was done. But here, Sarah pulled what must have been a ten pound bag of the golden seeds out of her purse, plopped it on the table, and asked for the exchange rate with barely any interest at all.

Toby didn’t even need to know anything about gold value or exchange rates to know that the goblin was insulted and offered her an insultingly low rate in return.

Sarah waved her hand to accept it and the goblin opened the account for her and logged the value in it.

He was standing to usher her out again, but Sarah was still sitting with her eyes still wandering the office disinterestedly when she said, “Tell me, how many bushels of those gold seeds would it take to destabilize the British wizarding economy?”

The goblin froze where he stood.

“What amount to flood the market and make the galleon worthless?”

The goblin didn’t say anything.

“Would a hundred thousand do it?”

The goblin walked back around his desk and sat down.

“Would they need to be melted and cast as coins or could they be used directly?”

The goblin finally spoke, “what do you want?”

Sarah was finally looking at him directly and it was her serious look of intent. “At the moment, all I want is for my brother to have a nice, safe time at Hogwarts where he’s going to school. As long as he’s fine, I don’t care to spend much time here. But I would have to get revenge for any injury done to him.”

“Your brother.”

“Yes, Toby Williams. His parents already opened an account for him. They used muggle currency.”

“I see.”

“I doubt I’ll be using my account very much. It will likely just stay there, sitting in your vaults. Unless I have to come back for a family emergency, of course.”

“Of course. We will do our best to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“Thank you.” Sarah finally got up and prepared to leave.

The goblin got up again too, to usher her out, much more respectfully this time.

“And Warwick?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“While I’m ambivalent towards wizarding society in general, I have a soft spot for goblins.”

“Do you?” The goblin sounded like he was choking on his own sarcasm with that.

“If the bank itself ever decides it wants to destroy the wizarding economy… just let me know.”

And Warwick looked… considering.

“I will keep that in mind.”

They nodded to each other in farewell and Sarah left and Toby came back from the vision, outside of the crystal again, and thought, “wow.”

“Indeed.”

“How does Sarah’s economy work? I mean, clearly it can’t be gold.”

“Favors. Her population is still small enough to have an economy of favors. There will need to be currency eventually, of some sort or another, but even the Labyrinth doesn’t maintain currency as strictly as any of the nations above do.”

“Huh.” Which explained a lot, really, the more he thought of it. It also explained why Sarah never, ever asked Jareth for anything.

Toby, on the other hand, never refrained from asking Jareth for whatever he wanted. Even when it got him some very weird and unexpected results, it was always fun. One of the major disadvantages of going to school in Hogwarts was that he couldn’t just call on Jareth whenever he liked. Toby knew he was spoiled by the attention but he liked it and he was spoiled and he would take advantage of it.

But Toby knew from Professor Binn’s classes about the wards that kept goblins out of Hogwarts, especially goblins with connections to the Underground, and even more especially the goblin king himself.

Still, his fifth year was hard. The famous students, the war heroes, came back to finish their education and disrupted everything and all the focus was on them and celebrating and the younger students, the students who’d stuck it out and survived, who’d spent years learning to keep their head down… continued to keep their heads down.

“I wish Jareth were here,” Toby said into his blanket. “I _wish_ he were _here_.” There was a hopelessness to the wish, because he knew that Jareth couldn’t be there, in the Hufflepuff dorm room for fifth year boys. He didn’t expect the wish to be granted, evening knowing the power of wishes, but he said it anyway.

It was the final crack that Jareth needed, an invitation to push through the barriers long worn thin between Hogwarts Castle and the Underground.

Because the Goblin kingdom had lost Hogwarts Castle in the Wizarding War more than a thousand years ago, but it was still a goblin castle. A lot could happen in the thousand years since the barriers had been raised and tunnels collapsed, to separate the castle from the kingdom.

In a thousand years, tunnels could be excavated. Barriers worn away. Dangers forgotten.

For years now, Jareth had been able to watch Hogwarts with his crystals, and to make small changes. Small changes, like adding a name to the student invitation list. Adding an American’s name, when it should have been only British children who got invitations. But no one had noticed because the boy had been visiting his sister at Oxford at the time, a present for his eleventh birthday, to visit Oxford, England.

Sarah had looked less surprised and more ironically amenable to what she clearly suspected was his influence.

But if not for him, Toby’s invitation to the wizarding society would have come from the Salem Institute in North America instead, and that would have been a travesty. A lost opportunity. The Salem Institute was even more blind than most wizarding institutes to different magics, and while Toby would and did find even Hogwarts simplistic in it’s knowledge of magic methods, his presence in the goblin castle would protect him from the nationalist movement sweeping wizarding society and his presence would create a claim of residency to the castle, a claim of residency that would allow him to extend invitations.

There was a reason why half-bloods were generally not admitted to Hogwarts. It was prejudice, yes, but it was also that wizarding society had been founded on that prejudice, had been structured to deal with individuals in a certain way that wasn’t compatible with the existence of half-bloods. A few got through, of course, but only as rare exceptions who had their individual situations tailored to them.

No one in wizarding society knew about Toby Williams. He was not a half-blood after all, not strictly speaking. Pure muggle-born by all the records.

But he had ties of blood to the Land of Near-Endless Plains and of friendship to the Goblin kingdom.

And no one with any sense would have invited a goblin to be a student at Hogwarts Castle without guarding against who he might invite in turn.

The last of the old guard still in residence, General Binns was a victim of his own success: he’d guarded the castle so well that the threat was forgotten and he was left a wisp of memory, trying in vain to warn the youth of an inevitable invasion, ignored for the more immediate bickering among wizarding kind.

The basilisk left to guard the way had been suborned long past, distracted from its guard duty to obey the orders of a nationalist stump speaker who knew nothing of the greater diplomacy of nations. Not even the half-wizard half-goblin teacher in the castle knew anything, for he was the get of a banking goblin, that tribe of goblins who had split from the kingdom during the wars and declared themselves neutral.

Hogwarts castle had been lost to the goblin Kingdom centuries before Jareth had risen to the kingship, but its loss was still a faint ache like a stretched muscle or a missing tooth. It would have been easy enough to ignore, but so much more intriguing to prod at and test.

And while the rules still stood that no goblin could be invited to the castle, the brother of his consort was of pure human blood for all he had spent nearly thirteen hours in the heart of the Labrynth. And a student could invite family. And laws of hospitality were old magic in a way the ban on goblins could never be.

Hogwarts castle was a lock – a great lock that rested on the opening between the Aboveground and the Underground. Slytherin had placed a basilisk in the chambers immediately under the castle to guard the way, and as a first defense against encroaching goblins before they reached the students.

Slytherin and Gryffindor had argued their whole lives. They had bickered with one another and insulted one another and pushed each other to progressively greater heights. There was so much documentation of their conflicts that it was the easiest thing in the world for historians to overlook their devotion to one another, and even easier to overlook the reasons behind their actions.

It had taken a thousand years, a different goblin king, a consort with a land of her own and a baby brother with power… but Hogwarts defenses were restructured with a wish: “I wish Jareth were here.” Toby said into his blanket. “I _wish_ he were _here_.”

And Jareth appeared.

Toby let out a shriek but luckily it was still muffled by the blanket.

“You’re here? You’re really…” and then he paused because he loved Jareth and was loyal to the goblin kingdom and the land of endless plains long before he was loyal to wizarding society, but, “how are you here?”

“A lot can change in a thousand years, and you are the babe with the power.” Jareth’s grin was triumphant.

“I’m not a baby,” Toby said, but without any force to it. Many of the goblins from the city at the center of the labyrinth still referred to him as ‘the babe with the power.’

Jareth shrugged.

“Are you going to turn everyone here into a goblin?” Toby asked instead. Because if the goblin king was in a goblin castle, then it might possibly an outpost of the goblin kingdom. And people who stayed in the goblin kingdom for longer than thirteen hours ran the risk of being turned into a goblin unless they had extremely strong personal defenses.

Jareth grinned. “It would be interesting if I did so, wouldn’t it?”

It was Toby’s turn to shrug. “I mean, probably, but I would prefer that you not?” He was honestly kind of surprised at the truth of that statement. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t for all the teachers and all the students and all the war heroes to be turned into a goblins.

“Then I won’t,” Jareth said casually, as if it made no difference. “For you.” Then he grinned. “For now.” Then he looked at Toby with the piercing eyes of a bird of prey, “What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you had better figure it out.” Jareth’s smile was sweet and threatening. “Do something or do nothing. But either is a choice.”

And then he left again in a flurry of feathers and wings.

One of his roommates woke up just enough to complain about bloody owls delivering mail too late at night and Toby clutched his blankets and thought about what he wanted.

The war was over, the good guys won, except that they weren’t really the good guys, just the better-than-the-truly-awful guys.

Harry Potter, who was supposed to be the savior of the wizarding society, went off to do whatever it was that recently graduated wizards did and Hogwarts School and the Ministry of Magic settled back into their status quo.

Back into their status quo of teaching propaganda and stale recycled skills, of stifling knowledge with obliviates, and of sending their criminals through trials more interested in politics than truth.

Toby tried to figure out what he wanted as time continued on. As he saw Jareth swoop in and out of Hogwarts as an owl on a semi-regular basis, completely unnoticed by the school staff among all the other mail owls.

Toby was a Hufflepuff because he was loyal, but there was no one in wizarding society worth being loyal _to_. Not on a societal level. Toby had friends and family and favorite teachers even, but nothing the Ministry of Magic or the Hogwarts School had done was worth making him loyal to it in a the deepest meaning of loyalty, for a shared loyalty to one another for a combined chance at greater things.

Thinking of all his Slytherin friends, he couldn’t think of anything meaningful in the current systems worth being ambitious for. When the minister of magic was a shill and a conman, the position purchased with gold rather than thoughts or deeds, why would anyone with true ambition desire it? 

When spell development was stagnant with tradition and change viewed as a threat, then the only path to cutting edge magical development was shackled to concepts of dark lords and wars.

It took him two more years to think through his thoughts and figure out what he wanted: something worth being loyal to and something worth being ambitious for.

Something needed to change. 

And as it happened, Toby had a history study group all ready to listen to him.

The teachers knew about it and supported him in gathering all the best and brightest of their students together to study history. There had been enough problems with secret gatherings that they were required to have a teacher supervising but the new professor Luna Lovegood was barely older than them and just as traumatized. Possibly even more traumatized if what Toby suspected was true.

The war had already been fought and most of the students here had been too young to fight in it, even if they were never too young to be traumatized by it. To have lost family and friends to battles and to prisons.

“A lot of people ask, why do we study history? What’s the point?”

“Because it’s awesome!” His fellow students chorused in response, quoting his own much-used refrain.

“It _is_ awesome! And I hope you all know that by now! But also, _also_ , it’s important to _study_ history if we ever want to _make_ history.”

The silence after that was sudden and oppressive. These were the survivors who had heard too many human monsters claiming to be ‘making history.’

“We’ve lived through a war, and yet, nothing has changed! Nothing has gotten better.”

“I’d say people not killing us is an improvement.” One of the students disagreed.

“Okay, yes, you’re right, it’s better than during the war. But it’s not better than before the war. And there was a reason why so many people fought for Voldemort just to have something different from what it was before.”

“Don’t…” Professor Lovegood started.

“No,” one of the other students interrupted. “Let him say what he has to say, in front of us all.”

“Thank you,” Toby said. He recognized that he was being given an opportunity hang himself if he said the wrong thing. And there were a lot of wrong things to say.

“In the thousand years, since the last Goblin war ended, there have been 37 officially recognized Dark Lords in the United Kingdom. That’s a Dark Lord _every_ generation. They rise and they fall and another rises to take their place. With Lord Voldemort’s defeat two years ago, we’re on track for another Dark Lord in twenty years.”

“So you’re going to become him?” one of the students challenged. “To save us from someone else?” The sarcasm was caustic.

“No,” Toby shook his head. “No. I want us to jointly think through how to have a society where would-be dark lords have something else to challenge. Where strong, smart, powerful, ambitious wizards and witches have opportunities to become great without funneling all of their energy into destroying everyone else instead.”

“Dark lords are dark lords because they want to conquer.”

“No! Dark lords are dark lords because they want to be great! And we’ve all been set up to fail instead.”

“What do you mean?”

“I love learning about the goblin wars, as you all know. But here's a question: why are there no goblins in classes with us? We have a half-goblin teacher, we had a half-giant teacher, for a while at least, and we have a full-blood centaur teacher. But all the students are humans. And all the subjects are human-centered. Hogwarts may be the best magical school in the world, but it's only comparing itself to some pretty weak schools.”

He’d spent years learning as much as Hogwarts could teach him, but he still went home over the breaks and learned even more from his sister’s people, from the goblins and the fae and the magic-less humans who still understood the theory than most wizards.

“Because let me show you something.” He pulled out a crystal ball. “This is a goblin crystal.”

Professor Lovegood, started forward with a jerk, "Don't!"

Toby spoke over the interjection.. "It can show you things, but there's a price for it. If you ever get offered one, be very careful about accepting. And I'm guessing that Professor Lovegood learned that the hard way." 

Professor Lovegood looked stricken and Toby was sorry about hurting her, but it was important for the rest of the students to know this. It would have been important for Luna Lovegood herself to have known this before she’d had her experience. "At a guess, you are the only person to still remember that you were not always an only child."

The other students were looking at Professor Lovegood with wary eyes, some of them even edging away from her, and Toby had to call their attention back.

"But that's not the point. The point is, why do none of the rest of you recognize it? Why is this not covered in our classes? Beauxbaxten accepts Veela students, but they are there under special exceptions. Why are there no Veela students at Hogwarts? Why are we not introduced to any fae? Why is muggle studies a travesty of a class mostly intended to convince us that we shouldn't look any further?

“We're all told that muggle technology doesn't mix with magic. How many of you have realized that's not actually true? The castle's not wired for electricity much less internet, and the anti-apparation barriers block radio waves, but it's the anti-muggle wards that actively targets items insufficiently handled by magical beings. 

“I brought in a TV and a VCR and a generator and I held it in a magical purse for the last year, so we can all watch it now. It takes a lot of time to convince the wards that these are magical technologies rather than muggle technologies. But it's easy enough to do. 

“And it's important to do. 

“Because we've been told for too long that we are the best there is and there's no reason to look anywhere else. And then there's a war about it. And we're killed, and our families and friends are killed, and then we’re blamed for believing the propaganda or for not believing it enough. 

“And yes, I kind of want to burn the whole ministry down for what it's done to us, all of us, pure blood and muggle born alike. But this is our society and if we want to live in it, and make it ours, then we need to make sure it _is_ ours.

“Some of you already know my connections to other realms. Some of you have come home with me over the holidays. Some of you have even attended some of the events in the Land of the Plains or the Goblin Kingdom.” Some of them had, his closest friends and his most traumatized acquaintances who had needed a safe place to go over the summers and breaks, or even just a place to go, regardless of whether or not it was safe. But this was the first time he’d spoke about it in public to a group, had announced that he had other connections, that his loyalty was not to wizarding society and not to Hogwarts.

He had to make that clear, because he wanted that to change. He wanted to give his loyalty to wizarding society. He wanted wizarding society to be something that was worth his loyalty.

“I'm proud to be a wizard. I'm proud of my magic and the things I can do with my magic. And you, each and every one of you, should be proud of it too. 

“But the power structure here, the power structure in the ministry obviously but in the school too, has turned pride into shame by selling us a story that the only way we can be great is if everyone around us is awful. They won't even tell us about the achievements of other races because they don't think our achievements will stand up in comparison.”

“That’s not true!” One of the pureblood leapt up. “We are better than all of them!”

Before any of the other students could start yelling at him, Toby shouted them down. “They why don’t we study them? We study flobberworms, but not mermaids! We study everything that is truly and obviously lesser than us, but when it comes to the beings who could be our equals, who could be our betters even, we’re just told that they’re lesser and to not question it. It’s just another bit of propaganda to keep us caged. To keep us from _actually_ getting better.”

There students who had listened to him for years tell stories about the goblin wars, shifted and eyed each other but also continued to listen. He had spoken for years about the goblins as equals to the wizards, as worthy opponents and powerful enemies. They had accepted that because those goblins were long since defeated, or at least so they thought. He hadn’t expected that to play such an important role in what he wanted them to acknowledge now, but it did.

Because now he could say, “If our wizarding society is threatened by mere _comparison_ to others, then it’s not worth the pride put in it. In separating ourselves from so many others, both like and unlike us, we have harmed ourselves as well. We are locked into our community of magic, like rats in a box, fighting each other for space, and yet unwilling or unable to leave the box and risk the greater unknown.”

They were listening to him, and some were even nodding along.

“It will always be the unknown until we’re willing to look at it, until we’re willing to know it. We don’t need another civil war, we need a revolution. We need to create a society where every would-be dark lord has something they can do to be great that’s not just ripping down someone else. So that all of us, including those of us who never want to be dark lords, and even less want to be followers of another dark lord, have an option to succeed. Have something else to fight for, something to create rather than destroy. And to do that, we need to stop being so damn scared of anyone else having success.”

“We don’t need one dark lord every two decades, we need a hundred light lords _every_ year. We need to find greatness and recognize greatness and support each other, because it’s become really clear that no one else is going to do so.”

“What do you even expect us to do?” One of the other seventh years asked, tired and world-weary. “I hear what you’re saying and I might even agree with it, but what does it matter?”

“I think we need to start with three things:

  1. Make friends, or even just acquaintances, outside of this society
  2. Don’t let the ministry silence us or anyone else. Don’t let them take away memories, our own or others.
  3. Stay in contact with each other. This is my seventh year and I’ll leave Hogwarts next month, but I’ve run this history group for all seven years and I’m going to start a journal because we should have a way to tell each other of our successes and our failures too. It will be a wizarding journal but there will be no secrecy wards built into it.”



“You’ll get arrested for that.”

“And thrown to the dementors”

“And that is why it has to be done, because that’s what the current Ministry of Magic thinks is right. That sharing knowledge is punishable by torture. That trying to create something new, something different, must be a target for destruction. Luckily, I have some insanely strong personal protections. But yes, there is risk involved. And there will be risk to others as well. But I still think you should all take time to ask yourself, what do you want to see in the world. What can you personally accomplish and what can you challenge others to do.”

“Like you’re doing right now?”

Toby nodded. “Yes, like I’m doing right now. The first issue of ‘Ambition & Loyalty’ will probably be something like a manifesto, but I hope that you all take the opportunity to write to me, to write to all of us, about your own ambitions, and your own loyalties. Because every dark lord who thought genocide was their own option, wanted something else first and was just too dumb, or too traumatized themselves, to figure out how to get it in any other way.”

They nodded. They considered. Some of them would probably report him to the school administration or the ministry of magic, but that was okay too. Everyone had a right to their own loyalties and their own ambitions. There just needed to be more options than there currently were.

Toby wore gold for the Near Endless Plains and grey for the Labyrinth, but together for Hufflepuff and loyalty and helping his friends survive and flourish.

The war was over, but the revolution was just beginning.


End file.
